Modern gaming consoles, television set top boxes, televisions and other electronic devices with broadband access are becoming sophisticated and now may be provided with an ability to access the Internet, or other communication ability, and with a browser or other user-friendly interface program for reviewing information. These devices allow web browsing and various interactive features including social networking features and yet the hardware controllers and devices may not be suitable for such interactions. Chat has now become an integral part of the online gaming experience, and is also becoming important in the context of communicating with a friend or other third party when watching a movie or other television show when the parties are in remote locations, however joystick or gaming controllers are not exactly known to enable rapid and easy text input. There is a need for some innovation to enable interactive text entry using various consumer electronics devices. Thus, users may want to interact with each other through an electronic medium when they are playing each other in a game, perhaps reviewing single displayed information such as a series of photographs or the results of a search request, or when they are each watching the same movie or television show, but when they are not located physically near each other.
Current text input mechanisms for interactive TV and gaming typically provide a virtual keyboard where the user selects one key at a time to enter text. This is not necessarily an efficient mode of text entry. The input can be slow, tedious and annoying as the cursor moves from one key position to another. Such difficulties are magnified when such text input is being made to a non-traditional input device, such as using a remote control, joystick, gaming controller, scroll wheel, TV remote control, knob, or a small touch screen with a keyboard displayed thereon, or the like.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,202,853 issued to Ng et al. provides one approach to improving on this situation by providing a reduced number of keys, but retaining the typing map of a conventional QWERTY keyboard. A plurality of letters, numerals, symbols and functions are assigned to a set of data keys that are used by typist. While this solution does improve accuracy as a user need hit the reduced number of data keys, the '853 patent does not provide any added flexibility in providing an even further improved user experience.
Therefore, it would be beneficial to provide an improved text input method and apparatus that overcomes the drawbacks of the prior art.